Gymnastics 101

An intro to gymnastics…

Gymnastics is a high-intensity sport that requires strength, endurance, balance, flexibility and more. Both men and women can participate in the sport, however, they do so differently. Women compete on four apparatuses (balance beam, vault, uneven bars, and floor), while men compete on seven apparatuses (vault, rings, pommel horse, parallel bars, high bar and floor). The Olympic order of apparatus performances is as follows: vault, bars, beam, floor. 

For men, the sport was first included in the Olympic games in 1896 and the 1920s for women. Only a few years later, in the 1950s, both men’s and women’s gymnastic became standardized sports with uniform scoring formats. Since then, gymnastics has become one of the most highly watched Olympic sports.

Gymnastic routines are scored out of 10.00 points based on both difficulty and execution. The A score (difficulty score) is used to determine the level of difficulty of the routine, and the B score is used to score the execution of each skill performance. Together, these two scores make up the overall score of a gymnasts routine. For each mistake a gymnast makes throughout their routine, ranging from a fall to failure to point their toes, points are deducted from the score.

Famous Gymnasts

Like any other sport, there are some athletes are more well-known than others. Gymnastics has an extremely large following, leading some gymnasts to rise to fame. Some of the most famous gymnasts are as follows:

• Simone Biles

  

• Nastia Liukin
• McKayla Maroney 
• Alicia Sacramone
• Shawn Johnson
• Mary Lou Retton
• Kohei Uchimura
• Jacob Dalton
• Paul Hamm

 

 

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